Recently, attention has been focused on biological cells capable of contributing to tissue regeneration. Although known examples of cells obtained from adults that have differentiation ability include mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) that have the ability to differentiate into bone, cartilage, adipocytes, neurons or skeletal muscle and the like (Non-Patent Documents 1 and 2), these consist of cell groups containing various cells, the actual state of their ability to differentiate is not understood, and there have been considerable fluctuations in therapeutic effects. In addition, although iPS cells (Patent Document 1) have been reported to be adult-derived pluripotent stem cells, in addition to the establishment of iPS cells requiring an extremely complex procedure involving the introduction of specific genes into mesenchymal cells in the form of a skin fibroblast fraction and the introduction of specific compounds into somatic cells, since iPS cells have a high tumorigenic potential, extremely high hurdles must be overcome for their clinical application.
It has been determined from research by M. Dezawa, one of the inventors of the present invention, that multilineage-differentiating stress enduring cells (Muse cells) expressing surface antigen in the form of stage-specific embryonic antigen-3 (SSEA-3), which are present in mesenchymal cell fractions and can be obtained without going through an induction procedure, are responsible for the pluripotency possessed by mesenchymal cell fractions, and that they have the potential for application to disease treatment aimed at tissue regeneration (Patent Document 2, Non-Patent Document 3, Non-Patent Document 4). In addition, pluripotent stem cells (Muse cells) have been determined to be present in mesenchymal tissue of the body, accumulate at the site of a tissue damage when body tissue has been damaged and be responsible for tissue regeneration (Patent Document 2, Non-Patent Document 3). However, not only has the mechanism by which Muse cells are guided to damaged tissue not been elucidated, but the chemotactic factor that guides Muse cells to the damaged site has also not been identified.